Woodlands style

style from the 1960s Great Lakes region Canada

Woodlands style is a visionary genre of painting developed by Anishinaabe artists of the Great Lakes region, above all the Ojibwe of northern Ontario. It was founded in the 1960s by Norval Morrisseau, who translated the imagery of birch-bark scrolls (wiigwaasabak), rock pictographs, and Ojibwe oral tradition - learned in part from his grandfather Moses "Potan" Nanakonagos - into paintings on canvas and paper. Morrisseau called his work a continuation of the shaman's scrolls, and its outlined forms, X-ray views, and spirit lines carry cosmological narratives of transformation and animal-human kinship. From the 1970s the style spread through First Nations communities in Ontario and Manitoba and into the United States, carried by artists such as Daphne Odjig and Jackson Beardy and by groups such as Professional Native Indian Artists Inc. It remains a living tradition of contemporary Indigenous art.

Norval Morrisseau, Artist and Shaman between Two Worlds, 1980, acrylic on canvas, 175 x 282 cm, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. “Norval
Norval Morrisseau, Artist and Shaman between Two Worlds, 1980, acrylic on canvas, 175 x 282 cm, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. “Norval CC BY 2.0 (credit: joanne clifford) · source

Defining characteristics

  • Bold black outlines enclosing every form, from figures to spirit beings
  • X-ray views revealing organs, bones, or spiritual energy inside people and animals
  • Spirit lines tethering humans, animals, and plants into a single web of relations
  • Flat, vivid, high-key color, often saturated to the point of garishness
  • Forms floating on bare or lightly washed grounds, with little modeled depth
  • Subjects drawn from Anishinaabe cosmology: transformation, visions, and animal-human kinship

Key figures

  • Norval Morrisseau (1932-2007) — Ojibwe founder of the style, who carried shaman's-scroll imagery into modern painting
  • Daphne Odjig (1919-2016) — Odawa-Potawatomi painter and co-founder of Professional Native Indian Artists Inc.
  • Jackson Beardy (1944-1984) — Anishinini Cree painter of legend imagery and a co-founder of Professional Native Indian Artists Inc.
  • Carl Ray (1943-1978) — Sandy Lake Cree painter among the style's earliest practitioners

Example works

  • Artist and Shaman between Two Worlds — Norval Morrisseau (1980)
  • Androgyny — Norval Morrisseau (1983)

Sources

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